Category: Uncategorized

Members of the New York Fire Department, circa 1908 Back to normal blog posts starting tomorrow!

Sunday, May 4th is Keith Haring’s birthday! The new 2 Columbus Circle: about as ugly as the old one [Gothamist] Forgotten NY and few dozen friends hit Gravesend, Brooklyn. [Forgotten NY] Totally ridiculous 60s advertisements [Gawker] Say goodbye to the Hog Pit. Oink! [Flaming Pablum] And check out the new and improved Gowanus Lounge!

Cheyenne Diner … saved! [Lost New York] When developers come calling, even the dead have to move. [Queenscrap] Sorry I missed this one — 81 years ago last week, Mae West was imprisoned on Blackwell’s Island for her ‘obscene’ play titled ‘Sex’ [Roosevelt Islander] Curtains close on the historic Provincetown Playhouse. Thanks NYU! [Curbed] Radical… Read More

Above: Grand Theft Auto IV’s version of Times Square Next Tuesday, the world stops for millions of Americans as they finally clutch copies of the hotly anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV. As in a few other incarnations of this bloody, aggressive adventure, the action takes place in Liberty City, an Earth-2 version of New York… Read More

Director Jules Dassin died this week. He just happened to direct a film I wrote about a few weeks ago — The Naked City — featuring one of the most extensive on-location New York shoots of almost any film before 1960. Now you have no excuse not to go rent it this weekend! HE’S SHOT… Read More

Above: new Yankee Stadium We’d like to give a big thank you to Kevin Walsh for giving us a generous shout-out on his site Forgotten NY. Most of you I’m sure are familiar with this great site, the ultimate investigative New York history site that specializes in the unique and sometimes unknown corners of the… Read More

Few events in New York can trace themselves as far back as the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, a tradition that has been celebrated in some form since 1766. The spirit of ‘everybody’s Irish for a day’ was not in effect; that first parade was a strictly military affair, featured only Irish soldiers in the… Read More

Jack Straw and Condi Rice (as played by the Bowery Boys) sit debating at the U.N. Security Council We’d like to thank Caroline Jeanjot and Dan Schreiber for giving the two of us a smashing behind the scenes tour of the United Nations building last week. We had an absolutely fantastic time. There are regular… Read More

Fred W. McDarrah’s photograph of Robert F Kennedy touring a Lower East Side tenement on May 8, 1967, a year before his assassination. He was there visiting the apartment once inhabited by a young Jacob Javits, the New York Senator born to Russian Jewish parents who spent his childhood in the Lower East Side. What… Read More

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as it looked in 1903, before its additions. (And the picture below is from another angle and another year — 1905) Source: Library of Congress via pingnews. Maybe walk your dog elsewhere Skeletons found in Washington Square Park [The City Room] Renwick Ruins no closer to being un-ruined Beaureacracy theatens… Read More

Sorry, we’re experiencing some extreme technical difficulty with our podcast this week. We’ll post it here and on iTunes as soon as we get everything to work. Thanks!

We’ll return with a new podcast and new blog entries next week. Happy holidays! By popular demand, here’s some pics from this years Dyker Height’s extravaganza. Photos courtesy of Kari Hoerchler.

Above: At the Helmsley Building, downtown Manhattan Hollywood hits the Chelsea Hotel [Hotel Chelsea Blog] The thankful return of the former East Village institution 2nd Avenue Deli [Eater] The forboding home of ‘Mamie’ Fish, successor to THE Mrs. Astor [Lost City] The latest on Officers Row, Brooklyn Naval Yard’s in-danger historic section of 19th Century… Read More